Weekly write 4

First devise ten sentence starters with a subjunctive stem, ‘if I were...’ Then, taking each one by one, challenge yourself to follow it with, ‘... I would be ...’ and so complete a sentence.

Feel free to vary the pronoun, and to play around with the length of both the stem and concluding clauses - and especially, to subvert whatever you first thought of. Approaching this with attitude can help - perhaps a little grumpiness - and a good old rant can be very therapeutic!

Now choose one of your sentences and free-write for 5 minutes without stopping. And don't worry if you go 'off-task'. The main thing is to keep writing now you've started.

This also works well as a group activity. At NWP Whodunit on 25 March 2017, we had ...

‘If I were a rainbow ... I would bring arch my back; I would bring promises to sick children.’‘If I were a walk ... I would stretch across the South Downs from Midhurst to Beachy Head; I would be a stride.’‘If you were a particle of dust in the museum ... you would dance in sunbeams, before settling with others in dark, combustible corners; you would move from room to room on a feather duster.’

It was a playful way of pinging the elastic of language, and it brought laughs and surprises. Another of the affordances of writing, perhaps?

NWP Leyburn undertook this as a collaborative exercise in May 2017. Each writer contributed to a subjunctive 'stem' and then the responses were compiled as a poem:

A life well-loved

If I were an old woolly jumper I would remember every stitch being made. I would remember growing by the fire as the needles clicked while she waited for his return.I would caress his beautiful torso with my warm, sensual arms. I’d stroke his soft skin and strong manly frame. I would fill myself with delight without him even realising.I would envelope my owner in a sense of calm and the scent of wet dog. My embrace would comfort and cosset him and my presence would be relied upon in time of need.I would be proud of my sagging and bagging, happy to see them as signs of a life well-worn and loved.The scent of tobacco engrained in my fibres, I would wrap around my grieving mistress and soak up willingly the tears of happy memories.

There are many other sentence-stem starters. I used one in a writing group in April 2017 which began 'I'm grateful for ...' It was given to me by someone who thought people would benefit spiritually and emotionally by 'counting their blessings' every day. He was giving himself the challenge to list ten different things he was grateful for each day. He said it was hard, but it was working for him. As a group exercise, it had a positive effect and, in reading around, people laughed at the comically trivial, the specific and the personally realised.